Organizing Chaos

 For the whole time I've been sewing (about 4 years), all the patterns I've bought, downloaded, created - have all ended up in my "Patterns" binders. At this point in time, it was just a chaotic mess of papers and cut-outs.

Forget about finding anything. It was somewhat in order, but the worst part was lugging it around, having papers spill out, then patterns get mixed up - or ripped up by these children. I decided it was time to do something about it.

So I took a file that I used for sorting different types of papers, condensed those cuz I care not for papers anymore, took the file headers (that came with the file, never used, thankfully) and stamped the file names on them.

 

Now  Everything is in its place. I clipped all small pieces for patterns, instructions, and all that so I know what goes with what. It took a while to get it all sorted out, but I did find a bunch of patterns for many things I used to make and totally forgot about - outta sight, outta mind sorta thing. I'll be happy to start making those again!

You can find the file box at Target for about $10 or less. Maybe not this same one since I got it about 2 years ago, but I'm sure they've got cuter ones now. Organize anything and everything with it; recipes, documents, wedding stuff, whatever it is that adds cluttered chaos.

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Before & After: Transforming My Kitchen

Its amazing what a little paint can do. Here is Before. Ugly. Hideous. No me gusta. Also, notice the ancient refrigerator. It worked great but couldn't sustain a family of 5.

 

At this point we painted the walls and took all the doors off the cabinets with the intent of refinishing them. Yeah...we didn't end up doing that.

Here we have the south wall, crammed with junk.

 NOW for the AFTER!

Ahh....Much better! We painted all the cabinets, windows and doors white and spray painted the hardware black. I think this entire transformation cost about $50-$75. Not bad, eh?

Now it looks like a real kitchen. I'm happy.

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Craft Room: Before and After

I said I was going to make a project out of my craft/sewing room and I sorta did. I didn't get to paint it but honestly, I just needed to get my little sanctuary up and running. It was cluttered and not even close to being organized but I just locked myself in there and got to work. This is what it looked like before:

As you can see - just a  huddled mass of stuff. Some stuff didn't belong in here so my room was becoming a catch-all. I had to put a stop to that (even though I was a contributor ). So here is the room now...

Sewing a shirt, presently

Some supplies as well as my daughters' old dresser to hold my vast amount of fabric and yarn

More stuff to keep me somewhat organized.

So there it is. Im finally being more productive these days... though it has been tougher to do much with 3 kids. The newborn is not even the hinder-er; its my 2 year old Lucy. That kid is a wrecking ball I tell you what. Look at that face...you know she's about to do something sinister... 

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Waste not, want not

OK, I'm sort of a pack-rat, but in a good way! I have a hard time throwing away things I can see some future use for. In this case its mineral make-up jars. I have loads of them with nothing in them and all they do is take up real estate in the medicine cabinet. So, since I'm getting back into making jewelry again (see my shop soon for that!) I decided I really needed to organize my beads - mainly my 4mm crystals. These jars are totally perfect to store them in. I sorted them in the jars by colors and wrote the colors on the lids with a silver paint pen.

If anyone else would like to share any storage tips, please post them! I'm always looking for more ways to get organized!

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